Yeah, those languages do a really good point of demonstrating the original point! Java would lead to a lot better performance in a lot of cases (like building a native application say) but Python despite being slow, has great FFI (which Java doesn't) so is a good shout for use cases like data science where you really just want a high level controller for some C or Rust code.

Point being, Python despite being slow as a snail or a cruise ship will lead to faster performance in some specific contexts, so context really is everything.